


Sunsets

by Anonymous



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Fatherhood, Happy Ending, Jokes about dingoes eating babies, Jupiter Family, Life on the NOMAD, M/M, Melancholy but cozy, Sunny is also here but she is a baby, includes: me trying to figure out what Snake and Otacon actually DO as Philanthropy, post-MGS2, pre-MGS4, that accidentally get emotional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28222335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Snake and Otacon land the Nomad in the Australian desert overnight to refuel.A snippet of Jupiter family life as the world is falling apart around them despite their best efforts, and they have to raise a baby in it anyway.
Relationships: Otacon/Solid Snake
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31
Collections: Anonymous





	Sunsets

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the nonprofit charity fanzine ["At Any Time, Any Place"](https://anotherotasunefanzine.tumblr.com/), published in November 2019.
> 
> I figure, it's been a year that this fic has been zine-exclusive, and I never posted it because I wasn't as satisfied with it as I could be. However, revisiting it and making a few edits, it's time to release it to the world. The zine version has an excellent illustration accompanying it!

It was strange now to be silent, to be still. To be back on the ground. Otacon had lived thirty years of his life on the ground, obviously, but for the last few hours the complete lack of the hum of plane engines left him unnerved. The Nomad wasn’t supposed to be this silent for this long. Even Sunny seemed to notice—she hadn’t fallen asleep since they touched down on the hard red earth, and had sat for hours now on Otacon’s lap, silent and staring, as he tried to work around her.

“Any luck?” Snake asked, coming back in from outside.

Otacon sat back, pushed his hand through his tangled curls, and readjusted his glasses. “No. Not yet. That new PMC must have hired some better IT guys because their comms satellite has been back up and running for hours, and I can’t get in to jam it again. Well, I’m sure I _can_ , but by the time I do, they’ll have already moved all their tanks and planes into Crimea. I don’t know if there’s a point.”

“You know they’re on the move?”

“Yeah. Since just before we landed.”

There were a lot of reasons he was feeling on edge.

Snake nodded, and made that familiar rumbling sound in throat that meant he was listening, that he was thinking. “Then we’ve bought the Ukranian forces an extra week to prepare.”

“Is that enough?” Otacon asked, shifting his position in his chair, trying to kick feeling back into his leg which had fallen asleep but trying not to rattle Sunny. “There’s still going to be war now. We couldn’t stop it.”

“They’re better prepared for that PMC’s invasion,” Snake said. “And we can’t know what effects the week's drain on the PMC’s resources had. If it fails to establish itself among its competitors, which was the intent of the Crimea job they just fully embarrassed themselves on, it might dissolve completely.” He lit up a cigarette, coughed. Otacon made a face. Sunny did too. “You need to accept your partial victories. They’re the only kind anyone really gets.”

They were sitting still on the ground in Australia. Crimea was on the opposite side of the world. There was nothing Otacon could do, and he felt that very distinctly.

Snake breathed out a cloud of smoke, staring at his cigarette. Then, “When is your contact coming with the fuel refill?”

“Not till tomorrow morning,” Otacon said with a sigh. “His truck’s been having issues.”

Snake frowned. “Do you think he’s been compromised?”

“I don’t think so, no. He’s been complaining about this truck for as long as I’ve known him.”

“Hm.” Snake rolled his shoulders and grunted. His shoulders seemed stiffer lately; maybe the constant altitude. Otacon had gotten used to it faster than he’d expected, but it still couldn’t be great for any of them to be at forty thousand feet for weeks on end.

“Then if there’s nothing else you can do right now,” Snake said suddenly, “we should take the evening off. No hacking, no Metal Gears, no PMCs. Go outside. Get some sunshine.”

“What? But—”

“Don’t tell me you couldn’t use a break. You look miserable.”

He could. His leg was now cramping, and his back hurt more than he’d noticed. And—how long had Sunny been staring at his computer screen? That couldn’t be good for her, even if she liked it, right?

Otacon stood, picking Sunny up in the process. She huffed a little in resentment, but didn’t make any noises of protest. Sunny was two and a half, as best as Otacon could guess based on many nights of insomnia-fuelled baby-website research, and she still hadn’t started talking, or babbling, or anything, which was worrying. To him, at least. They’d had her for six months and were trying to do everything right and he couldn’t shake the fear that all they were doing was messing everything up for her.

“Is it safe?” Otacon asked, holding Sunny awkwardly against his hip and glancing out the door left open to the bright Australian evening. “To take her outside, I mean.”

“There’s no one out there for miles,” Snake said. “It’s as safe as we’ll ever be. Probably be good for her, more than anything.” He laughed, a short sharp sound. “We can even go camping. What’s more classic than that?”

“Sleep in the dirt? I’ll pass.”

“You never went camping as a kid?”

Otacon snorted. “No. For a few reasons.”

“Huh.” Snake shrugged. “I went camping all the time. When I was a kid it was mostly wilderness survival training, but I don’t think my foster families would have _actually_ let me die if I failed. I was valuable cargo.” He gave a small wry smile, though, the memory taking him back. “We did a wilderness survival training with FOXHOUND in a place that looked a lot like this. I think Master Miller _would_ have let me die if I failed. _He_ cared about me, at least.”

“You’re making some very compelling arguments for why camping is fun and we should do it.”

Snake’s laugh was more genuine this time. “Just sit outside while the sun sets, then. Get out of this tin can and be part of the world again for a little bit.”

The slightest breeze wafted in through the door, carrying the smell of dust and warm wild air. He hadn’t been outside in weeks. When he was younger, that hadn’t bothered him. Maybe this was part of getting older. Sunny squirmed in his hands.

“Yeah. I guess that’d be nice.”

* * *

They ended up sitting in the dirt anyway. Otacon sat down gingerly a few yards from the plane, trying to settle into a comfortable position on the ground while trying not to drop Sunny, even as his back protested. Snake didn’t seem as bothered; being outside revitalized him like nothing else did. He crouched on the ground, wearing his stupidest civilian clothes, pulling up the dry scrub that covered the flat ground in all directions. Only Solid Snake could be rooting around in the dirt wearing a half-buttoned brightly colored Hawaiian shirt he’d grabbed during a half-hour Goodwill run after they’d had to emergency-evacuate their last apartment and leave nearly everything behind, and make it look good and natural anyway.

He was even, voluntarily, building a fire. Confidently, the skills second-nature to him, practiced a long time ago until they were nearly instinct—but still. Choosing to do so must mean he felt calm and relaxed and in a good mental space. Otacon tried to take the cue and relax too. The desert around them lit up red in the setting sun, the faintest rustle of air through the low brush the only noise. Every time Snake pulled up a half-dead-looking plant to add to the tinder pile, it seemed like the sound broke through the natural silence and reverberated for miles—which, of course, it didn’t, and even if it did, the scrubland was empty of humans for days in any direction. There was no one to hear it. When Snake struck a match and lit the little arranged cone of brownish stalks and tiny leaves, the low crackle of the fire filled their little camp space with a soft raw ambient noise that soothed Otacon’s mind, at least a little.

Even as he tended the fire, though, Snake kept flashing small sidelong looks at Otacon. Making sure _he_ was feeling okay, wasn’t made too tense by this whole suggestion. Which cracked the image of calm confidence Snake was trying to project, just a bit.

Otacon tried to give him a reassuring smile. He could feel on his face just how self-conscious it must have looked.

But it wasn’t bad. He’d never really felt comfortable in wide-open spaces, especially not in the last few years, but they’d chosen the landing site thoroughly. He knew where the closest houses and towns were, knew that Philanthropy’s ongoing projects were holding stable for the moment, was mostly certain they hadn’t been detected. The slow sunset over the distant red mountains cast slowly-growing shadows over the scruffy rust-colored earth. The evening was hot and still.

They were safe right here, right now. On a night like tonight he could close his eyes to the sun and the wind and believe, for a moment, that the world wasn’t falling apart around them.

Sunny, clinging to his shoulder, started chewing on his hair.

The fire burned through the neat pile of dry brush. The shadows continued to lengthen. As the sun faded behind the mountains and the dark rapidly stained the sky, something moved against the dusky horizon. With his free hand, Otacon shielded his eyes. About a hundred yards away, a handful of stocky sandy-colored dogs skulked along an invisible perimeter.

Otacon nodded at them. “Hey, Dave. What are those?”

Snake looked up, blinking, breaking out of his mesmerized stare into the fire. He squinted, then, after a moment, said, “Oh. They’re dingoes.”

“Those are dingoes?” They had perky ears and thin snouts and lazily-wagging tails. They looked like the skittish stray dog that had lived in the weed-filled lot where Snake and Otacon had parked their van for a week last year. “I expected dingoes to be more like wolves. Those are _cute_. I want to pet them.”

“They might rip your throat out if you try,” Snake said lightly, leaning back on his heels, sinking with audible relief into easy banter. “They _are_ like wolves.”

Otacon tilted his head and looked over at Snake, eyes wide in mock hurt. “You mean those good boys could kill me?”

“Maybe not you,” Snake said with a lazy grin. “They almost never attack adults. But keep an eye on Sunny if you’re going for it. Don’t we know,” and he switched to the stupidest fake Australian accent imaginable, that despite his ostensible effort still sounded uniquely like him, “‘A _dingo_ ate my _baby_.’”

It barely took a moment for a weird, cold pit to form in Otacon’s stomach. A few more for him to find the words for the feeling. “That’s not funny. A dingo ate that poor woman’s baby. Can you _imagine._ ”

It was weird how easily he could imagine. It was weird how _vividly_ he could imagine, even though he didn’t want to, weird how sharply the image gripped his heart, how heavy and fragile Sunny felt in his arms.

Snake looked alarmed when the tears started. It was supposed to be a stupid joke, and Otacon wasn’t _trying_ to overthink it and certainly wasn’t intending to cry, but he’d never been good at stopping either once they started.

“Uh,” Snake said.

“I would fight every dingo in Australia for Sunny,” Otacon said, the words landing stupid and dramatic on his ears. He didn’t care. It was true. “I would punch every one of those cute, deadly dogs right in the _face._ Right—right in the schnozz.” He tried to turn it back into something of a joke. By the look Snake was giving him, it wasn’t really working.

The quiet wind rustled through the brush and caused the small flame to leap and flicker, flaring bright against the darkening sky.

“This is what it’s supposed to feel like, isn’t it,” Otacon said, holding Sunny tight against his chest, staring into the fire.

“What?” Snake asked, his tone hesitant, guarded.

“Everything. Having Sunny here. Having—it’s not just us, anymore, you know?” His breath was coming in hiccups and it was hard to keep his words from trembling, hard to keep his thoughts from scattering. “Like Sunny is the most important thing there’s ever been and I want—I want to keep her safe, I want her to be happy, more than anything. And I don’t know if it’s even possible for us to do that, and it—it scares me, I guess. It scares me more than anything, Snake. That I have no idea what I’m doing, and that’s going to ruin her life.”

Snake moved closer and put his hand on Otacon’s back. A warm, grounding presence that steadied his trembling lungs, his fluttery breath.

“And, just…” He wasn’t hysterical, exactly; he’d long since found out that at this point the only way out was through, the only way to prevent the dammed-up feelings in his chest from exploding into a full-on anxious breakdown was to slowly, deliberately, let them out. “From this side, it’s obvious that—that I know for a fact my own father never felt this way about me.”

There. The words were out there, reluctantly, but they were true.

Snake went still. Then, with a gentle “hrnh,” he reached out to take Sunny, and held her close to him in his lap. Otacon gratefully took the opportunity to push up his glasses and wipe his eyes with the heels of his hands. The tears blended with his short, bitter laugh.

“Saying it like that. It’s stupid, isn’t it?”

“It’s not stupid,” Snake said.

“It is stupid. I’m a thirty-year-old man and I’m still crying because daddy never loved me.” When he looked back up, his glasses were askew and his eyes gleamed behind them like pale, smooth stones pulled out of a river. His mouth was set in an expression wry and stubborn that would brook no argument. “I don’t know what I’m _doing_ , Snake. All—all I ever really wanted was a normal family, I think. And I’m realizing every day that I don’t know how to be one. That I don’t even know what that’s supposed to look like.”

“We’re both doing the best we can,” Snake said. “With what we have. You’re doing all right. All we can do is give this girl better than what we were given, and to try to make a better world for her than the one we got.”

The outback hummed with the wings of insects roused by the dusk, a natural soundscape more quiet than true silence would have been.

Otacon said what both of them were thinking.

“The world isn’t getting better, though.”

In the distance, the dingoes moved and shifted among the brush.

“We’ve been fighting for so long already,” Otacon continued. He wasn’t crying anymore, not really; the tears were always quick to come and quick to go, draining his energy with them. He mostly just felt tired. “And it’s not enough. Everything’s getting _worse._ I don’t know how much we’re actually helping anymore.” 

Snake huffed. “Well. Do you love Sunny? You want her to be safe and happy?”

There they were, the words he’d been slinking around the perimeter of. “Yeah,” Otacon said. “Yeah. Of course I do.”

“Then you’re already doing better than either of us got. You’re already making one corner of the world a little bit brighter.”

Snake looked off at the horizon, into the last piercing orange rays sliding along the sky. “Well,” he said. “While we also work on the rest of it.”

Otacon sniffled a little, but was able to give a short laugh. “An internationally-wanted terrorist’s work is never done.”

“No work is ever done,” Snake said. “Not really. And someone needs to keep doing it. And whether or not we have a choice, there’s no one I’d rather remake a crumbling world with than you.”

Otacon’s smile at that was shaky and mildly embarrassed, but real.

He let his gaze wander off toward the horizon, where Snake had been looking. The sun was gone, the sky a haze of orange and purple. The dingoes seemed closer.

“... _will_ we have to fistfight the dingoes?” he asked.

“I doubt it,” Snake said. “They’re shy.” He smirked, though, and shifted Sunny to one arm. “But watch _this_ —”

Snake cupped his hand around his mouth and howled to the sky. 

It was a pretty remarkable imitation of a dog’s howl, and all the dingoes as one turned to look.

_“Snake!”_

But Sunny giggled, the first sound she’d made all day. And as Snake’s voice rang through the air and into silence, the dingoes shuffled and one by one raised their voices to howl back. Otacon could feel the hair on his arms prickling, but not in a fully unpleasant way.

He scooted closer to Snake, pressing gently against his partner’s shoulder, as the call-and-response between the two families faded over the desert.

**Author's Note:**

> Is this the sappiest, shippiest fic I have ever written? Yeah probably. This was the fic that made me realize that I am not good at writing romance, lol.


End file.
